


Almost Blowing it

by katrinawritesthings



Series: Hermit Crab au [2]
Category: SHINee
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-10-20 09:12:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10659477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katrinawritesthings/pseuds/katrinawritesthings
Summary: “Oh my god,” Taeyeon giggles, as everyone else in their little circle groans or shakes their head. “You are not a ten. Suck my dick.”





	Almost Blowing it

**Author's Note:**

> **tw for transphobic anuses**

This party is kind of just… okay. A solid five-point-four out of ten, if Jonghyun had to put a number on it. The music is too shitty to be this loud and the drinks are too watered down for anyone to actually get drunk. He doesn’t know why he was expecting any different from some party thrown by a friend of a friend’s friend. Still, though, he’s having fun over here with Kibum and a few other friends of his, sipping cheap beers and gossipping about the usual shit. It’s not really about the party; it’s more about him being back in town from college and being able to see all of the old shit again.

It’s when he’s glancing over to the door of the kitchen and debating on whether or not he wants to grab another beer when he sees something that finally catches his interest.

Or rather, someone. A tall, pretty, red-haired someone, with a cute and flowery style that he absolutely adores. He watches them a moment, smiling for no particular reason other than that they’re smiling as they laugh at a joke that he can’t hear.

“Hey,” he mumbles, leaning over to Kibum and nudging his arm. “Who are they?” he asks, pointing across the room. Kibum first throws him a glare for interrupting his sentence, and then throws a glance across the room until he finds Jonghyun’s sudden person of interest.

“With the flower pin?” he asks, like Jonghyun would ever fall for someone that _didn’t_ wear flower pins. “Taeyeon. She goes to the same dance studio as me.” He looks away with a shrug; Jonghyun keeps looking with a renewed sense of attraction. A dancer? He likes dancers. Especially dancers as pretty as Taeyeon over there with her eyesmiles and blushed cheeks.

“Is she single?” he asks, leaning over and interrupting Kibum again. “Or poly?” Kibum huffs, frowning at him.

“She dances in the same general area as me for an hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I don’t know her fucking life story, Jonghyun.” He flaps his hand in Jonghyun’s face with annoyance. Jonghyun pouts. he wasn’t being that demanding. He was just curious. He keeps pouting until Kibum notices and scrunches up his face. Jonghyun makes his eyes all big then, too. He’s not nearly as hurt as he’s pretending to be, and Kibum knows that, but he still sighs and turns to look at him fully. “Oh my god. Do you want me to go introduce you?” he asks. Jonghyun immediately brightens.

“Would you?” he asks, fluttering his eyelashes and clasping his hands together innocently. Kibum gives him a look of utter disgust, tells his friends that he’ll be right back, grabs Jonghyun’s wrist, and yanks him across the room. Jonghyun follows happily because this Taeyeon girl is only getting prettier the closer he gets to her.

~

Half an hour later, Kibum has called his group of friends over to join Taeyeon’s--aka the girl of Jonghyun’s dreams. She’s easy to talk to, an awkward but confident kind of funny, likes dogs, and, despite dressing like the sweetest, lightest, most innocent little flower, curses like a fucking sailor. Jonghyun is very romantically attracted. He’s been sending her flirty eyebrow wiggles for the better part of the last ten minutes. He’s not subtle at all, but neither is she with her amused little smirks and playful jabs at his ego.

She also has the cutest breathy laugh, which he finds out when he casually mentions a little something-something about her face being too pretty for anyone under a ten, so obviously he’s the only one here good enough for her.

“Oh my god,” she giggles, as everyone else in their little circle groans or shakes their head. “You are not a ten. Suck my dick.”

Holy shit. Jonghyun immediately adds her to his potential bae list. He is absolutely a dick man.

“Is that an offer?” he asks, wiggling his eyebrows for like, the thirtieth time. “Because I’d be down for that.” He’s always down for dick. Dick is what fuels his soul in the mornings. Taeyeon giggles some more, but before she can even answer, Kibum interrupts.

“It’s a figure of speech, you giant homo,” he snaps. Jonghyun frowns at him. Rude. He’s not even homo. He just likes dick. Kibum’s the one that's _actually_ a giant fucking homo. “She doesn’t _actually_ have a _dick._ God.” Kibum rolls his eyes like the very notion of entertaining that thought is ridiculous. Which it’s not, so Jonghyun frowns some more.

“Well how would I know that?” he grumps. “I haven’t stuck my head under her dress.” Not that he would object to that, if she does have a dick.

“Uh, because she’s a chick?” someone else says, muffling chuckles behind their hand as a few others of the group do the same. “Obviously she can’t have a dick.” The rest of the circle laughs and cracks a few pretty disgusting jokes and Jonghyun suddenly understands why he’s feeling so confused and uncomfortable. It dawns on him with a horrid cringe that he has to fight to hold back to keep seeming polite. These aren’t his normal friends, the ones that he exclusively picked over at college. These are just… people, random ass people that haven’t been screened for the usual bullshit and don’t know pan from poly. The probably won’t even care enough to learn, either.

He would not get back together with this group of people a second time if he were back at the school. And to be honest, if Kibum wasn’t the only one with good connections still in town, he probably wouldn’t even hang with him anymore. It sounds harsh, but he did not spend two years after high school cutting out all of the toxic people from his life to come right back to them during his vacations. He puts on his best “not amused” face when their laughter dies down, arms crossing in front of his chest.

“I don’t get what was so funny,” he says. “You know dicks aren’t exclusively a dude thing, right?”

“Oh my god.” To his left, Kibum rolls his eyes so far back his whole head rolls with them. “Will you shut up with the social justice bullshit for one day?” he asks. “We get it. You’re so much more educated and better than we are. Tone it down until you go back to people who care, alright? Fuck.”

Jonghyun doesn’t even have the words to reply to that. What the fuck? He huffs, taking a disgruntled sip of his cheap beer. Excuse him for caring about things. He supposes Kibum is right, though. What’s the use of trying to explain things to people that don’t give a shit? And he bets Taeyeon wouldn’t really want him to start a conversation about her genitals, anyway. That would actually be pretty fucked up. He sighs, shaking his hair out of his eyes.

“Fine,” he mumbles. He glances at Taeyeon quickly to judge her reaction to all of this, see if maybe she looks as grumpy as he is, if maybe she isn’t quite as bad as the rest of this group. He’ll take literally anything, any indicator that she’s still available. She’s really fucking cute and things with her were going great so far, but--

“I’m not a fake lady, I promise,” she grins, and _ugh._ As everyone else laughs and the conversation gets back to wherever it was before the dick thing happened, Jonghyun puts her squarely in the “no” category. A damn shame.

He really doesn’t wanna be here anymore. Not with this little circle of people, anyway. He thinks he saw that Amber girl from his old music club milling around earlier. She was always cool. Maybe he’ll go see how she’s doing instead. For now, he just sips his beer and stays in the conversation just to be polite. He’ll excuse himself to get get a refill when he’s done and not actually come back after.

He’s busy doing just that five minutes later when Taeyeon stops him with a soft hand on his arm and asks for his number with her flirty little smile. He hesitates; he wants to say no, but he can’t just shut her down in front of everyone. They already think he’s a downer. He forces a smile, saying yes for now and planning to just delete her number later. Once she hands him his phone back, he scuttles away to the kitchen with a sigh of relief. He hopes Amber and her friends aren’t that shitty.

~

Amber is not shitty at all, as it turns out; she’s still as fun and chill as ever. She also still spends fifty percent of her speaking time talking about several different people that she’s in love with, except now she’s in a relationship with all of them instead of whining about having to choose, which is nice. Makes for more pleasant conversation. The rest of their conversation is equally pleasant, talks about music and movies and cute girls.

And speaking of cute girls--it’s not two minutes after Amber leaves for home and Jonghyun shuffles aimlessly into the kitchen again that his phone vibrates in his pocket with a text. He pulls it out curiously, only for his face to assume a grimace as soon as he sees the name: “Delete Later.” That’s Taeyeon. He sighs, debating for a moment on whether or not to even look at the text before deciding that it couldn’t hurt.

__**From: Delete Later  
** 7:27 PM  
_Hey, remember when I said I didn’t have a dick and made a really transphobic comment earlier?_

Wait, what? Jonghyun blinks at his phone, confused. He doesn’t even register anything other than shock before a second text pops up.

__**From: Delete Later  
** 7:28 PM  
_I was lying and I do, in fact, have a dick._

__**From: Delete Later  
** 7:28 PM  
_Self-defense, mechanism, you know?_

__**From: Taeyeon  
** 7:29 PM  
_Anyway, I really appreciated that you didn’t assume and tried to stand up for a little bit and I was wondering if maybe you wanted to talk with me alone for a little bit?_

__**From: Taeyeon  
** 7:29 PM  
_I’m out on the back porch. Some drunk assholes are trying to do backflips from the roof into the pool. Come and find me and we can watch them and I can explain?_

That’s the last text. Jonghyun stares blankly at his phone for a long moment, just reading over the words. Holy shit. Holy--holy fucking shit. This is not something that he ever expected to happen. This is good--she’s definitely not on his _ugh_ list anymore--but this is also bad, because holy shit, he kind of almost outed her? If _he_ felt uncomfortable with that whole ordeal, he doesn’t even want to think about how she felt. Fuck. Even if he didn’t want to keep talking to her, he would go out back just to apologize.

As it is, he jams his phone back into his pocket, grabs himself a cheap soda from the fridge this time, and hurries out to the backyard.

The first thing he sees is some drunk asshole do a triple backflip into the pool, which really is impressive, he has to admit. The second thing his eyes land on after a scan of the area is Taeyeon, sitting on the porch railing with a cardigan around her shoulders now and a pretty smile on her pretty lips. He shuffles closer, tapping her gently on the shoulder to get her attention. She turns with a questioning hum that quickly turns into an exclamation of relief when she sees Jonghyun’s face.

“You actually came,” she smiles, feet kicking lightly off of the railing. “I thought you would’ve deleted my number by now.” She gestures for him to take a seat on the railing with him; he just leans against it instead, smiling a little guiltily.

“I was going to, later,” he admits. “Um--sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Taeyeon says, waving a hand dismissively. “I get why you would.”

“No, I meant--” Jonghyun shrugs, fiddling with the rim of his soda can. “For coming that close to outing you, earlier. I forgot that I wasn’t with my usual crowd.” He shrugs sheepishly; Taeyeon snorts and Jonghyun watches her eyes follow another, less impressive leap into the pool.

“So did I,” she mumbles after the splash. “But then again, my offers for dick aren’t usually taken up so easily, so.” She turns to him and cocks a brow, which he just grins at. Like he’s gonna be ashamed of liking dick. Ha.

“How could I say no to such a pretty face?” He slides along the railing to get up closer to her, nudge her side with his elbow. She snorts again, but he catches a tiny pinkness at the tip of her ear. _Ha._

“You have no setting in between ‘on’ and ‘off’ for flirting, do you?” she asks.

“Absolutely not,” Jonghyun confirms easily. “Wanna ditch this party and go get something to eat?” They can talk about things, like dogs and cute flower crowns and the raging injustices that plague their world. It’ll be fun. Taeyeon takes a moment to consider, one that spans the length of a third drunk asshole doing a cannonball into the pool big enough to almost splash the two of them. Then she hops off of the railing and into the flower bushes under it, picking her way through carefully them and smiling at Jonghyun when she’s done.

“Sure.”


End file.
